A high dynamic range camera with a non-destructive readout complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor sensor

We report on a hardware-based implementation of two image processing algorithms that take advantage of a non-destructive readout (NDR) imager, which is connected to a custom embedded system. A reconfigurable logic device on the embedded system is used to control the imager, capture raw NDR image data and perform two different image processing algorithms: correlated double sampling (CDS) and 'up-the-ramp' image reconstruction. Implementing both of these reconstruction algorithms on the embedded system requires less data to be transmitted than the total of all of the raw image data, thus improving the frame rate. 'Up-the-ramp' images possess superior quality to CDS images, at the expense of a lower frame rate.